How to get into Y Combinator
If any startup incubator has instant name recognition, it’s Y Combinator. This makes it a hot ticket and a high bar. Any founder that has been accepted into Y Combinator inevitably puts it right at the top of their LinkedIn profile within minutes of getting the email. It’s an impressive achievement, and people are generally impressed when you tell them you’re a YC startup.
Approaching your Y Combinator application as a bid for a feather in your cap is, however, the wrong approach. Rather than try to impress their judges, treat your application like a high-octane exercise in transparency and speed. Pedigree and clever storytelling are never bad things to have, but they won’t get you into YC alone. If you’re going to make the cut, you need to plainly show that you and your team are the right people to solve a real problem. You’re so suited to the task, in fact, that you’ve already started solving it.
You want to appear almost preternaturally well-suited to solving the problem in question. YC loves founders, and it will look at you and your co-founders CVs before it looks at the specifics of the idea you’re pitching.
There doesn’t need to be a perfectly straight line from your background to your current project, but you should be able to show how you arrived here. If you’ve dealt with the problem on a personal level, lead with that. If you identified the problem through working in whatever industry it plagues, explain what you saw that others missed (or just decided to keep tolerating). YC wants to see evidence that you were putting the pieces together long before you sent in your application. Better yet, they want to detect that it’s inevitable that you will solve this problem. If this startup fails, you’ll try again with another startup just like it, only better.
Clear metrics, clear progress
For now, let’s deal with the startup you’re presenting, not the hypothetical one that would follow were it to fail.
Be clear. Clarity is king. Buzzwords will not take you far. Use simple enough language for smart non-experts in explaining both the problem and the solution. Writing short and snappy is always harder than being verbose, so expect multiple drafts. In fact, if you haven’t gone through multiple drafts, it’s unlikely you’re ready to submit.
Many startups shy away from YC because they don’t have the big numbers and shiny accolades. That’s understandable, but also a bit of a misconception about what YC is looking for. YC knows most early teams lack sexy metrics. Instead, tout your progress. You can build quickly, ship, and learn. Why are your paying users opening their wallets? If you don’t have paying users, how’s your engagement, retention, and qualitative pull looking? You want to demonstrate that your experiments generate results and data that you turn into action. Everybody claims they ‘listen to our users,’ but where is the evidence that you’ve actually acted upon user feedback? Put that up front.
The market question
Think from first principles writing about the potential market, which is a major question of the YC application. Instead of rattling off some statistics you Googled – ‘Gartner predicts that by 2030 this market will be worth $100B,’ for instance – tell them real numbers you’ve run yourself. It will sound something like this: “We will make Widget X that will cost $10. There are estimated 1000 users in Company Y that can buy it. We can make $10k per company. We are currently targeting X, Y and Z verticals that consist of 100k companies each.”
Investors are always looking for small and fast-growing markets. Identifying one of those, rather than pretending your potential market is the lion’s share of the global human population, is key. YC wants evidence that a big problem can be solved, even (and often especially) for a small group of people.
The tricky part
The most difficult question of any job interview is the one where they ask about your weaknesses. In a job interview, you need to be diplomatic about this. In a YC application, just be honest about what’s not working. They’re trying to assess how you think under uncertainty, not do a gotcha. Acknowledge the risks and lingering questions, then explain what you’re doing to resolve it and what roadblocks are in the way. Good judgement will take you far here.
YC applications are short on purpose. While filling one out, you will think the application is designed this way to annoy you. In reality, it’s designed to make you trim all the fat and present only the most streamlined and important message and information about your startup. You need someone who doesn’t know about your startup to read it and then explain it back to you. If they’re confused, fix it. Record your video in one take, looking at the camera. Production quality doesn’t really matter. They’re looking for founders who are direct, smart, and personable.
When YC isn’t for you
No one wants to hear that Y Combinator might not be the right fit, but sometimes it isn’t. YC is optimised for startups that can grow extremely fast and iterate in mere weeks. Trying to compress the long development cycles common among deep tech, biotech, or heavy hardware into the YC model presents challenges other startups won’t face. But the biggest disqualifier of all is if you’re not technical. YC is designed for hackers to help them become more business savvy. If you’re already reasonably business savvy, this may not be the way forward.
If you can’t plausibly become very large on a short timeline – usually via software-driven products with global markets and short feedback loops – then look for your incubator elsewhere. The YC model doesn’t add value by default. It has to work for YC just as much as it has to work for you.
Getting (and passing) the interview
If you get an interview, congrats! Now don’t freak out. This is a conversation, not a thesis defence. Answer the question that’s asked, directly and briefly. Maybe take a breath before each answer. Saying ‘I don’t know’ is allowed, so long as you then explain how you’d find out. Your reasoning will be challenged, so practice in advance.
If you go into your interview having internalised what YC really wants, you’ll be fine. They’re looking for fast-growing companies run by decisive and curious founders. Demonstrate it through your actions before you ever hit submit.
Build something people want, move faster than feels comfortable, and tell the truth about where you are. This strategy is good for getting into YC, but it’s first and foremost, good for running a company.
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